


Positive Energy

by Nadler



Series: goalie nesting [4]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016-2017 NHL Season, Goalies, M/M, Nesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 23:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/pseuds/Nadler
Summary: Pekka really, really should have noticed something when Juuse started vacuuming. But he didn't, and he was glad that he was doing some upkeep around Pekka's house. He jokes about giving Juuse chores, but all Pekka really expects is for Juuse not to leave his hockey gear everywhere and to help cook dinner, sometimes.





	Positive Energy

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I wrote a thing.
> 
> And it probably needs to be resolved in another thing.

Juuse wakes up early, which isn't normal, but that happens sometimes. Very rarely. But he's up, and working out is definitely the worst option. He gets out of bed and sits up. He looks around. 

He should tidy up, really. It's a little bit of a mess, and he thinks about what his mom would say if she walked into here: _Juuse, didn't I teach you to pick up after yourself?_ And it's only polite; it's not even his own place to leave a mess, and even if Pekka's spare room has become his room by sheer force of will, it's a mess. 

Juuse thinks about what Pekka would say, would look slightly amused at the mess and leave, not saying anything. Juuse frowns, and then he starts picking up things, starting with a sock, from the floor. 

He thinks he also should do laundry. He opens his closet, and some of his gear is drying on a rack, but it will be sunny outside, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

Juuse's elbow deep in dishes when he hears a, "You're up early" from behind him, and Juuse jumps a little bit. How didn't he hear him approach? Juuse needs to be sharper, clearly. Sharper, and more alert, and Juuse drops a bowl with a clatter and turns around to see Pekka smiling softly in the morning light.

There's a little beam of sunshine straight to Juuse's heart, and he smiles back. He says, "I'm being useful!" because he's industrious, and that's a good thing. It's still morning, and Juuse's been cleaning for hours. 

"You are," and two words before Pekka even has morning coffee? That is a very good thing. He finds the coffeepot on his own, and Juuse's already put the creamer and sugar out. 

And Juuse could use a break and a coffee himself, so he stops cleaning and goes to listen to the sounds of Pekka slowly becoming more human. 

 

At morning skate, Juuse feels unsettled. He empties out the cubby underneath his seat so he can neatly stack the stuff he keeps in there and set everything else on top. 

"You okay?" Jarny asks, and Juuse isn't sure why he's the one who's worried. Juuse looks up from the floor. 

"Of course I am." Juuse gets up, dusts himself off, and grabs one of the new towels (he checks) and disinfects every hook in his stall. 

"Are you going to die if someone sneezes on you?" 

There's a knocking on wood. "Careful, Calle," Jos calls out. "Don't chance it. Next we know, someone's going to get the mumps." He frowns at himself, and then he knocks on wood again. 

Then Juuse suits up, and he's headed out to the ice. It's almost right; there's warmups, but then it's just him, Coach, and Pekka, on a clean half of ice. They stretch, and Juuse holds for longer than he usually does; the strain gets through him, but he holds. Coach blows the whistle so they transition. 

Coach pulls one of the scratches to drill shots in sets of five on both of them, which is pretty normal. Juuse doesn't think he ever gets really set, but he doesn't say that, not when they're moving on to something else.

Then Coach brings out the white pucks, and Juuse swears under his breath. Those fucking _suck ass_. Across from him, Pekka's laughing, but only a little, and a part of Juuse deflates. They're nearly invisible, and Coach raises the net, even, so that anything left goes through. Puck-handling for one of them, and the net for the other. 

Pekka goes in first, and the first one goes off the post. Coach needs better aim, and Juuse has to squint to see it, to pass it back to the point. He sees Pekka shift in the corner of his eye, closer to Juuse, and the puck goes right to Coach's tape, clean as anything. 

This is one of the things that Juuse didn't think he'd ever really get to know; he's watched Pekka's highlight reels, and he's seen what kind of drills he prefers in practice, but there's a part of Juuse that will never get over his fucking childhood idol stopping a puck. Every move seems to be a little miraculous. Juuse doesn't know if he'll ever be that good. For now, he focuses on finding an invisible puck, coming in at awkward angles, feeling Coach's stern 'hurry up, Juice!' just as strongly as if he was breathing down Juuse's neck, and passing it back. 

Then Pekka's done, and he pats Juuse on the mask when they switch off. Juuse has his own time to put in. He anticipates, waits--he doesn't come out to the top of the crease. He just needs to wait, and there's the sound of the puck going high, and there's a clunk into his glove. His heart beats loudly. 

"First try, huh?" he hears behind him, and Pekka was watching, of course he was. Coach aims the next shot harder, and Juuse lashes out with his left pad to catch a piece of it, and it drifts away, lost to the ice. 

"Maybe you need glasses," Juuse chirps, just the slightest. He settles into the net, and he readies himself for the next one.

By the end of practice, when the skaters think it's time to dump the puck on him, and Pekka's already left for the locker room because he's starting, Juuse is determined. It's the principle of the thing. Usually, he'll laugh it off, but there's a dozen skaters who never pass up the chance to dump in a bag of pucks at the end of practice. 

Juuse doesn't let them come close. Some pucks inevitably come in, but he feels a bunch pile up against his pad, and he hears the ringing off the post. He doesn't want to leave, not until he sweeps the crease and smooths the ice down. It's not quite right, and he still has to kick out all the black rubber from his net, and he can hear a couple bounce off skates on the way down. 

He's not fetching those pucks. 

 

Lunch is quieter, but that's mostly because everyone's ready for tonight, and everyone's almost ready for the winter break. Juuse sits with the young guys, mostly because even if they're Swedish-weird, it's better than trying to understand what comes out of Nealer's mouth, and it's not exactly like he's uncomfortable with English, it's just--answering questions is difficult, sometimes.

He still gets home, first, oddly. He takes off his shoes and surveys it, a little. He's dusted. He's yet to mop the floors, but that can wait, and he starts walking. 

There's an open door in the hallway, and Juuse _knows_ he shouldn't invade Pekka's space, but his bedroom door's open, and no one's there. Pekka's bed is a mess, and it only takes a couple of minutes to make it for him. And another to fluff his pillow. It's presentable, and it looks more comfortable than ever--but Juuse looks down at his watch. He has to go soon. 

He hopes Pekka notices.

And Juuse goes to make sure the floor's swept before he takes his own nap. 

 

Heroes and childhood idols and elite goaltenders have bad days; the Wild come to town, and Pekka has a very bad game, and all Juuse can do is sit on the bench with a sympathetic expression. 

Juuse knows that there's only two ways to bounce back from a game like this: play through it or sit back and watch for a while. Because Juuse is a little selfish, he thinks it's going to be the latter. Juuse can play. It's not enough. Juuse _wants_ to _impress_ Pekka. He always does, of course. Pekka was patience itself at Worlds and during the few times Juuse got called up before he started squatting in Pekka's house for good. At least, he thinks so. 

He doesn't like the prospect of leaving. 

Juuse keeps making Pekka's bed, when Pekka's out or when he's running errands. It always seems so homey, and Juuse wants to build on it, a little, but that's too much; it's not his place, and what's worse, _Pekka never says anything about it_. 

But Pekka's also the one who unceremoniously tells Coach at their next practice. Juuse doesn't want to look anyone in the eye, but Coach asks, "Oh, you are?" and Juuse looks up. 

He nods at Coach. Juuse just says, "Yeah." It's not like he doesn't want to start; he's itching to start, to see how he plays, but there's a little undertone of sadness. 

And out of the corner of his eye, Juuse can see that Pekka smiles, adding, "He's been mopping my floors." And dusting. And taking out the trash. Juuse bites back the urge to crow a little, to say he's not just been sitting down. Juuse's a little horrified but that also means Pekka's _noticed_ , and that makes a smile creep up on his face, too. 

They must look a little like idiots. 

 

Juuse doesn't know if that means he's really getting the start or not. He sort of doubts it. It's not like he hasn't been wanting to play; he is a goalie, and he wants to play. He's not entirely upset, but he can't help like feeling that, when Laviolette pulls Juuse aside and tells him he's starting, that Pekka gave him this chance, that everyone else would be happy for Juuse to sit on the bench while Pekka tries to get into the groove. 

Juuse's doesn't think he has a lot of rituals, but he doesn't think any goalie really does. 

They're also at home, so the night before game day, Pekka knocks on the doorframe while Juuse's untangling his Xbox cords again, for the thousandth time, and Pekka says, "I could let you starve." 

"You wouldn't," Juuse returns, and he doesn't have to even look up to know that Pekka's joking, that his mouth is doing that little half-turn in the corner. Juuse wraps up the last cord, and puts it away, and he's ready to face Pekka again. 

He makes Juuse chop vegetables, but that, he can do. He fills up a bowl just as Pekka slides a tray of chicken into the nice, freshly scoured oven that Juuse found the time to clean, in between buying a new vacuum and washing the curtains.

Dinner is something that Pekka started; and Juuse knows it's because he can't eat terribly and live off fast food, and Juuse's learning, a bit. He can boil pasta. He can make rice, and he can chop vegetables. It's a little like he's learning what it means to be on his own. But not really, he's away from _home_ like away from his mother's cooking, away from _Finland_ and sometimes English is _hard_ and, yeah, it's nice. 

Even if Juuse makes broccoli-and-rice instead of plain rice, and it's slightly green, and there always seems to be more of it left than what someone expects, if two hockey players are eating. 

 

Juuse starts the next game, and everyone gets all the well-wishes out of the game, straight away, better than during, or after, he thinks. PK even tries to give him a noogie, and Juuse goes along with it, but he doesn't understand half of what he's saying. 

He loses in the shootout, and he doesn't look up once, after the Rangers file past him; and the indignity is that he doesn't even have a short path back, to try to get the miasma of losing to go away. 

Juuse didn't stop a single shot in the shootout. He feels even worse because this was his start, and he knows everyone had their attention on him, and he didn't dare look to the faces on the bench. 

"We got a point," Fish tries to console, and that's not a thing that's happening, captain. "And that's what matters. Can't win them all."

There's murmurs of agreement, all around. 

"Thanks, Juice," someone says, and Juuse pretends to look in that direction. He's mostly still in his head. 

 

"It was a good game, Juuse," Pekka tells him, in the car, and Juuse finagles a mockery of a smile. It wasn't. He can hear the pity, and that's not the kind of attention he wanted. 

It's never been. 

\-----

 

Juuse sits on that mood for three days. He does laundry. He even separates blacks from darks from colors, bleaches his whites.

If he's being honest, he nests harder. 

Juuse starts bringing his attitude to the practice rink. He claims a net at one end of the rink, and there's really no talking to him about it. He sweeps the ice, smooths out the whole trapezoid before he's ready to do anything. 

Coach just shakes his head and runs a few screening drills, that day. Juuse assents to doing a quick skate for warmup, and it's just two nets on the short end, skaters aiming haphazardly towards one of them or the other. 

There's stick-taps every time Juuse gets in a good glove save, and a only a few shakes of the head when Joey gets too close and Juuse's stick was already there, and Joey trips over himself. That wasn't Juuse's fault, at all. 

 

Juuse packs, too, but it's just for a road trip. Juuse's alarm goes off, and that's done. It's time, and Pekka jokes that he'll leave Juuse to drive himself if he doesn't get ready, but also, it's the team plane. They better be on time. 

After brushing his teeth, Juuse fiddles with his suit; he's not quite sure why they have to wear suits on the way to the airport and back, but not on the plane itself. It's a little weird, but it's the way they do things, and doing those things is important. Or something. 

Juuse spends the rest of his time color-coordinating a bookcase until Pekka finds his keys. 

His next start is on the second half of a back to back, and it's better, in a way, to know it wasn't a game that Pekka was going to play anyway. It's a team win, and Nealer'd been on hat-trick watch since the first period, and Juuse stopped every shot but one. It's against the Devils, but every win counts, and every point counts. 

"Full marks," someone says, and Juuse's not looking, but he thinks that's Eks. Juuse doesn't quite know what there's to do in New Jersey, but everyone feels like celebrating, and they've won this really quick road trip before the break. 

The best part of being a goalie might be the hugs, but afterward, Juuse kind of wants to douse all his gear in bleach. 

 

For all the jokes about it, nesting isn't really a sex thing. Well, it's _not_ not a sex thing, either. It's like--Juuse tried to explain it to a teammate, once. It's like a fancy date, but not really. It's showing off. 

You want to be flashy, but just the right amount of flashy. It's a starting point, maybe one of those notes that read in all big letters: I LIKE YOU, DO YOU LIKE ME, but more with body language.

He doesn't--he doesn't want to do anything that would make Pekka push him away. 

 

Juuse's rearranging Pekka's living room furniture when Pekka comes home. Only temporarily; he's trying to get a better sense of everything, and also to clean all the junk that falls in between the couch cushions and under it. 

"You aren't done cleaning by now?" And there's Pekka. It has been a long time for nesting, but it hasn't been _extraordinarily long_ ; and besides, it's not like Juuse was ever told to stop. He still has a goal in mind. 

Juuse gestures to the couch. "You can help me move it?" He tries to keep it light. "The house isn't spotless yet." Yet. 

"Cleaning doesn't really help, you know," Pekka says, and it's the first time he's spoken seriously about it, not just a passing joke to one of their teammates. It's not something that gets brought up a lot, either. "Or, I don't think you've been bringing anyone by." 

And the thought that Pekka thought that Juuse was trying to impress someone else makes him frown. Pekka smiles disarmingly, a little self-deprecation lining the outside edge. "I'm the one seeing most of your handiwork." 

Juuse can't help but return that smile, and there's a little flutter in his stomach. "Yes," Juuse says, because that's the point. It doesn't matter who else sees.

And Pekka takes a deep sigh, and Juuse's looking up at him, like always, but Pekka doesn't seem so tall at this moment. Juuse bites his lip, and it's tense. Something has to happen here, but Juuse doesn't know what, and he, he doesn't know. 

Maybe nothing he does will ever be enough. 

"You have a game tomorrow," Pekka settles on, and he's not looking Juuse in the eye, but he does place a soft hand on Juuse's shoulder as he leaves and--

And that's something. 

One last shot, maybe. 

\----

Juuse shuts out the Blues. 

No one scored a goal during the first period; and he was nervous. Juuse survived, but that's what it feels like--just surviving. He got back to the bench, winding down for intermission, and he smiles at both Fish and Matty, even though, they made Juuse watch everyone on the PK. 

It's one of the least favorite parts of a goalie's job, but they come out of it clean, blank, nothing on either side. It should maybe make Juuse nervous, but it doesn't. He even got a few fistbumps on the way to the bench, and Juuse says something generic back, "We look good out there" or maybe "There's a whole game left" or something, and everyone's ready to give their fans something to cheer for. 

Juuse didn't let himself look over to Pekka, to see whatever his current judgment was. Except--Juuse could feel someone watching him, and out of the whole arena, he could feel a bright smile pointed his way. 

Also, the chirping from the bench helped, too. 

 

They win 4-0, and life is life; they all head back to the locker room, after everyone thoroughly razzes Juuse; hugs that he thinks will squeeze the air out of him and taps that bruise a little. It's exhilarating. 

Pekka waits until Juuse settles down the marked-up ice, pats his crossbar before coming out to meet him. "You did good," Pekka says, and it barely consoles the little tug of doubt Juuse feels, especially because Juuse's confused.

Pekka slings his shoulder over Juuse's, and that's better. 

In the dressing room, there is still a sense of time and place, and he really doesn't want to get chirped for this in the morning, but it seems to easy to close the few inches between their stalls. Juuse leans on Pekka's shoulder, and he's not pushing Juuse away, which is all he can really _ask for_. 

It seems harder to scoot back under his own nameplate after the first time someone passes by and says, "Aw, it's his naptime already, Peks?" 

Pekka chuckles and only says, "He's had a long day. Leave him alone." 

 

They're watching something in TV, a documentary, nothing really requiring much brain power. And Juuse takes his spot on the couch, next to Pekka, and a part of him can pretend it's October again and another part anticipates something. 

"I was playing for you." Juuse even looks Pekka in the eye. Because not talking about it didn't help, at all. 

"My door was open," Pekka says, and that's half an answer. "I figured that out."

And it was. "I didn't know I was allowed," is his only reply. To what? To invade Pekka's space, to say 'Watch me', to _stay_.

Pekka snorts. "Didn't stop you, did it?" And no, it didn't, and the idea that Pekka was just waiting for him makes Juuse blush. Juuse thought, maybe, that they wouldn't have to talk about this. They're goalies; they could just understand, couldn't they? but he was wrong, and they do. Talking is hard, even when you are speaking the same language. 

Juuse takes a breath and asks, "Did I pass?" But what he really means is _'Can I stay--I don't want to go.'_ Maybe that was the most of it, the prospect of the future; it's terrifying. 

And he really doesn't want to go. Pekka's excelling at being a pillow. There's a long silence, or maybe it seems long. There are alligators on the TV. 

"You did." Another pause. More alligators swimming around. Pekka decides to run his hand through Juuse's hair, leans down in half a moment to brush a soft kiss to Juuse's hair.

Juuse falls asleep, and he feels pretty safe. And he doesn't need or want any more pillows. 

And just like that, life goes back to normal. There are more games to play, and there's a new year around the corner. Except they've never really cleared up anything. 

"You shouldn't get stuck on me," says Pekka, over breakfast. He yawns over his coffee, and Juuse still has the urge to fix the worn collar of his shirt, but Juuse also can't sew, so that's not a thing that's realistically going to happen. He takes a breath. "You don't have anything to prove." 

Juuse woke up in his own bed, not on the couch. It was definitely a downgrade. "I play for our team so they trust me," and Juuse thinks he has a point. "I played for you because I wanted to--"

And he doesn't quite know what he wanted, but he knows he wants it with Pekka.

**Author's Note:**

> And I wrote the [sort of sequel ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421688)


End file.
